MPs expenses must be published in full, court rules

MPs will no longer be able to keep their expenses claims private, after a court ruling on Wednesday stating receipts and invoices submitted by politicians must be made public.

The ruling was made
after the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA),
the regulatory body set up to monitor MPs’ expenses following the
2009 expenses scandal, challenged the order that it must publicly
release documents.

IPSA has been given the option of taking the case to the Supreme
Court if they wish, as the implications of the ruling could
affect many more public authorities, including government
departments, councils and quangos.

The court case centered around the inquiries of a Telegraph
journalist, who requested specific receipts submitted by three
MPs but was provided with only a transcript of the transactions.

Ben Leapman complained to the Information Commission that he
wanted original copies, and the court subsequently ruled in his
favor in 2012. IPSA has since lost its case at two tribunal
hearings.

IPSA was set up after the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, which
resulted in a number of MPs being sent to prison after it was
revealed they were secretly making illegal expenses claims.

In a move to restore public trust in MPs, the authorities
published more than one million receipts online, but did not
reveal the personal details of the claimants.

IPSA has previously claimed there is “insufficient public
benefit” to routinely publish receipts of expenses claims.

“Primarily, a trial of extracting and redacting receipts and
invoices for the purposes of publication showed that the cost
would be in excess of £1 million for additional staffing and IT
costs alone, compared to the approximate £250,000 cost under the
chosen model,” IPSA wrote in a letter to the Information
Commissioner in 2010.

The letter added that releasing receipts or invoices would be
“disproportionate in terms of costs, insufficiently
beneficial in terms of transparency and represented a higher risk
in terms of data protection.”

Speaking after the ruling, an IPSA spokesperson said: “We
need to study the judgment carefully. The court made clear that
this is an important test case with implications not just for
IPSA but for all other public bodies.

“We were right to test the point of law through an appeal to
see whether images of receipts add anything additional to all the
information about MPs’ expenditure that we already release.

“We remain completely committed to openness and transparency
and already publish a detailed breakdown of every claim made by
every MP.”